IFLA Newsletter # 104 April 2013
LANDSCAPE EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA EDUCATORS CAPACITY BUILDING GLORIA APONTE GARCÍA
Countries involved in the program
Education is one of the key activities that support our profession’s development and the accomplishment of landscape architecture goals for the benefit of society. Landscape architecture education began formally more than a century ago, and although that beginning can be traced to the American continent, its development currently shows a disturbingly unbalanced comparison between North, Central and South America. Educators Capacity Building: EDucators in Landscape Architecture (EDAP for its Spanish initials; EDucadores en Arquitectura del Paisaje) - was proposed by the Americas region Education Committee in 2009 during the 46th IFLA World Congress in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and finally became a reality in 2012-2013, through the IFLA-UPB (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, from Medellín, Colombia) agreement. The general objective of this initiative was to promote the development of landscape architecture in Latin American countries through capacity building for educators at the university level in this area of knowledge. Lecturers from seven Latin-American countries, acting as students in this case, attended the call very enthusiastically and participated in the two-part program. It was clear that participants achieved the specific objectives that were foreseen in the proposal: 1